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Intelligence Policy Center

Intelligence agencies are changing in significant ways. Effective management of these agencies requires not only a complex set of tradeoffs and links among requirements, resources, and capabilities, but also a willingness to accept risk and technological innovation.

The Intelligence Policy Center (IPC) assists clients as they confront today’s rapidly evolving intelligence environment. The Center helps decisionmakers identify and define emerging threats, such as terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which are more fragmented than the threats of the past. The Center´s research provides a strong foundation on foreign political, cultural, and military developments.

The Center also helps defense policymakers understand the changing role of intelligence in warfighting. In addition to its traditional role supporting other instruments of American power, intelligence today has an ability to create conditions to prevent, preempt, and deter adversaries. A whole new slate of intelligence instruments—including sensors, analysis tools, and fusion tools—will have the potential to transform warfighting, but only if they are considered as an integral part of U.S. warfighting strategy and tactics and tailored carefully to operational needs and conditions.

Research sponsors include the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial–Intelligence Agency, and other elements of the intelligence community.

Current and Recent Contributions

• Improving U.S. Intelligence Decisionmaking and Management
  How might adaptive planning processes be used to help agency decisionmakers think through acquisition reform, workforce management, systems engineering, outsourcing, and other strategic management topics?
• Assessing Current and Emerging National Security Threats
  How will threats to U.S. forces manifest themselves? How can the intelligence community inform the strategy community? How will these threats be identified? What sources of intelligence will be utilized, to ensure rapid identification? What are the best ways to identify, locate, track, and evaluate those threats and the risks they pose to the United States and its allies? What impediments—cognitive, cultural, organizational, or other—hinder early identification of these threats?
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• Improving Intelligence Analysis and Information Integration
  What new approaches to intelligence will enable DoD to counter these threats? What new approaches to intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination will prove the most promising? What is the optimal way to provide and portray intelligence information to DoD decisionmakers?
• Managing the Intelligence Community Workforce
  What might the increased demand for intelligence capabilities and the dramatic organizational change within the intelligence community mean for the IC workforce? How can human capabilities be rebuilt to meet the current and future challenges?

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Inquiries about the Intelligence Policy Center or its activities can be directed to:

John Parachini
Director, Intelligence Policy Center
RAND Corporation
1200 South Hayes Street
Arlington, VA 22202-5050
(703) 413-1100
John_Parachini@rand.org